Son of Agni
by Rick K'Tish
Summary: Agni has been far too lax about pruning his children's fates of late. He decides to take action; this changes everything. (Except that everything also kinda stays the same.)
1. Teaser

**I should be sleeping right now. I have to get up early to get on a plane. Instead, I'm going through my Google drive and finding random things to post, mostly just because I feel like it.**

 **How soon the first real chapter comes up will depend mostly on my access to wi-fi in the next two weeks; sumimashite.**

 **I don't own; I only wish I did.**

He crept silently toward his destination, not a sound marking his path through the night. It was not his domain, granted, but the mischief in him had made him a master nonetheless. Tonight's plot— indeed, the plot of the next several decades, barring any major interference from the others— had been laid (rather literally, he thought with a snicker), and now it was time to cover his tracks before—

"And here I thought you had agreed not to go sneaking around with any more women at night," a voice mused from behind him. He froze in his tracks. "Was she at least any good?"

"I, of course, have absolutely no idea what you may be referring to, honorable brother chosen by my blood."

"Of course you don't. You also have no idea who Ursa, Wife of Fire Prince Ozai, is, or where she's been the last few hours. Am I right?"

"Is there a problem, honorable brother?"

The older man raised an eyebrow. "I suppose they don't call you the Trickster for nothing, eh?"

Agni frowned. "I'm tempted to be offended by that."

Tui just gave him a mild look. "I just hope you're prepared to face the consequences of your actions. You know she'll be due in mid-late winter, right?"

"Yes, yes, that was intentional," the Spirit of Fire waved off, "It's clearly been far too long since I last pruned my children's fates; have you seen what they've been doing? They're disrupting the balance. This is just my way of... _fixing_ things."

That blasted eyebrow just couldn't go down, could it?

"I know what I'm doing!" Agni protested against the eyebrow's incriminating condemnation.

"...I certainly hope you do." Tui sighed, shaking his head. "Maybe actually having some _responsibility_ for once will finally break you of being the eternal child of the family..."

Agni frowned after his sister's husband as he walked away. What was _that_ supposed to mean?

Ah well. Not like it really mattered, anyway; everything was already in motion. He'd been planning this since Azulon's second son had been born, and now everything was finally starting to go into action.

The immortal teenager, the Spirit of Fire and Sun and Shadows, cackled evilly and sat back to watch events unfold.

 **Sorry it's short, but it** _**is**_ **a teaser. Hope this gets you interested.**

 **Predictions, anyone?**

 **~Rick**


	2. Eight months later

**So just as a warning, there's a lot of nakedness in this chapter. As in Ursa spends the entire chapter naked, because she's just given birth. Also Zuko is born naked (you know, like babies are?)**

 **Sorry it's so short, but I'm kind of being consumed by New York right now.**

Ursa stared in no little shock and amazement at what she had birthed, still panting from the exertion. She'd been somewhat concerned through the pregnancy because the baby had never kicked at all, only seemed to roll and tumble. But this she had never expected.

Wiping her sweat-streaked brow with the back of one bloodstained arm, she decided that the correct term for what she felt about what laid between her legs in the newly drained bathtub was _bafflement._

It was an egg.

Fiery red with mother-of-pearl reflections of deepest maroon and earthy brown and royal gold, bright like nothing she'd ever seen before even in the dim firefight anticipating her mourning. The umbilical cord attaching it to the placenta sprouted from a point close to the wider bottom of the egg, almost like a tail.

When she'd gone into labor so early, she had been left in her chambers, as was traditional, to birth and mourn the baby who was sure to die soon after alone. No one would answer her cries if she begged for aid; no one would enter for several days yet, no matter what noise she made. If she died during the birth, she was not strong enough to be the wife of a Prince of their nation. Nothing would bring anyone sooner than that except the cries of a living child for more than a week.

But now... She wasn't sure what to do. She'd never heard of a woman birthing an egg instead of a child, no matter how odd the pregnancy. Perhaps this was something she should have been taught at the age that she'd been training as a Sage Maiden at the temple of Agni. But shouldn't she have been informed at some point that this was a possibility?

 _Lord of the Sun,_ she thought helplessly, _I would have served you all my days, had the second heir of your First Sage not spoken otherwise. Oh, Agni; what am I supposed to_ do _with this?_

As she stared, though, the egg began to rock. Something was trying to get out, and in spite of the oddity of it all Ursa was still now a mother, and this was her child. A strange sort of calm filled her, like floating through the Clouded Spring back in her home town. _All is well. S_ he knew it distantly, almost like a choice not her own was whooshing it in her ear; _all is as it should be._

And so she turned to the ingeniously designed taps behind her and filled the tub once more with hot water, surging her aching muscles as she picked the egg up and cradled it against her breast.

"Come on, baby," she murmured encouragingly, "You can do it. I know you can!"

Something told her that this was a test of some sort, for both her and her little one. If he or she could break out of the egg without her help smashing it, the both of them would pass. And she remembered the chicks on dear grannam and grannad's farm in another life, before temples and shrines and visiting Fire Princes and forced marriages and _eggs that came from her womb._ The chicks who didn't fight their own way out of their shells died so quickly, while those who made it on their own became strong. She wanted her child to be strong— strong enough to survive the viper's nest that was the royal court.

Still, using her chi to wear away at the shell, make it a little thinner for the tiny, weak limbs beneath, wouldn't be helping too much, she was sure. And so she sat in the warm water for several hours, feeling her baby rock against the shell that kept them apart, praying for strength for the both of them as she gently fed her life energy into the solid surface. Eventually she felt strong enough to walk, and so she drained the tub once more, stood, and dried and clothed herself with one hand, still holding her child close. She watched as the umbilical cord fell away from the shell, leaving a tiny, fleshy circle in the otherwise solid surface, and prayed.

All that day, she called chi to her arms and chest and fingers, pushing energy into the shell, meeting that which her child thrust out at the confines of organic stone. She watched the sun rise, and intoned the legends of Agni and his trickster ways, sometimes sneaking by the light his sister bore, sometimes blatantly striding through the sky in bold defiance of the darkness of the universe which surrounded their world. She sat silently at noon, laying out an entire stem of dragoneye grapes from her labor-supply as an offering to the Spirit of Fire and Sun and Shadow, to dry and bask in the wine he sucked from their skins, leaving sweetened husks for the mortals who stood under his light. She stood for the last rays of sunset to fall on the fiery stone in her arms, pleading with the Lord of Trickery to bless her child, to sustain them both, to keep them safe and _alive_ in the face of all that stood before and against them. At last, she lay naked under the full moon of midnight, the egg resting between her colostrum-swollen breasts, fingertips resting gently against the pearly surface and feeding a steady stream of chi into the spun-glass-thin barrier. She had gone throughout the entire day as though guided by some outside force, some _other_ that was not frightening, only comforting. Consistent. Constant.

 _This is just as the First Mother of Fire did!_

She knew it, within her soul. The mother of the first Firebender had done just as she had now.

Ursa felt a blinding, all-encompassing sort of joy that made her gasp at the sheer power of it, tears leaked from her eyes to pool in her ears and she could swear she heard a woman's voice say, ' _Well done, child-of-my-brother's-children. Under the light my brother and I share, your son awakens.'_

The shell cracked. Then it split. And then, slowly as the dawn, a web of fractures faded into being like watching mist receding from the irrigation in the fields, each line leading to the next in a never-ending circle like Agni's phoenix of old. Finally, after an eternity in an instant, the shell fell gently apart, pieces of it scattering across her breasts and stomach, leaving only her son— beautiful, whole, with hair like ebony and already-golden eyes blinking open for the first time.

He huffed and grunted a newborn's exertion as he twisted himself to suckle at her left teat. She wrapped one arm around him and used the other to push herself up, still crying. He was small, she knew; part of her training as a bride had been as a bearer as a potential heir, and so she'd been taken to hold newborn after newborn throughout the royal city so as to understand what to look for in her own children to determine their health and well-being. She'd almost been passed over as Ozai'a wife, in spite of the fact that he'd pulled her away from her mountain shrine for that express purpose, because she was too tender hearted to recognise a child too ill to maintain. In her eyes, every child was worth care. Her own son now was small, but perfect in every way in her eyes. He might be too small to make it as a Prince of the Fire Nation, in the eyes of the others.

Determined, Ursa wiped a valuable dribble of sticky, yellow colostrum from where it had slipped naturally from her unoccupied breast with one finger, dabbing it at the corner of her hungry little boy's mouth, where it was quickly pulled in by his eager suckling. By the time the servants began to enter to seek her or her corpse, she would only have regular mother's milk to offer this child of her body, heart, and soul. She'd let none of the nutrient-rich pre-milk escape in the time she had until then; she would have this child strong and healthy to present to his father and the Fire Lord.

Her boy was special. She _knew_ it.

 **So... yeah. That happened. I don't know, I was trying to make a dramatic scene and instead it turned into La helping Ursa figure out what to do with an egg instead of a child. It just kind of came out.**

 **Sorry it's so short. More to come soon, I promise.**

 **~Rick**


End file.
